“There’s a murderer in the stacks.”

Shannon looked up. There it was again, that whisper, that susurration that travelled down the shelves of books until it found its way to her desk—she could not pinpoint its source, but she thought it came a long way, because she was stationed in a section that was buried behind and between many other sections. That was one of the benefits of working at The Haunted Library—most of the time people got lost before they found their way to her desk, even if she gave them directions, and she was left alone, able to shelve books and catalogue new titles in peace—although if she was honest, she spent most of her time reading. After all, how could she recommend books to patrons if she hadn’t read them? The logic was unassailable.

 Shannon pushed her chair back from her desk as the whisper tickled her ears once more. Had some unruly teenagers found their way onto her floor? Arcane and Occult Matters, that was her specialty, and younger folk usually got distracted before they reached it, seduced by the horror books (a specialty of this particular library) or short stories or comic books, all of which were closer to the entrance, and all of which had their own librarians.

Or had, once. But something had happened lately, some gradual change had crept upon the place slowly, and she almost didn’t notice, until one day it came to her.

The librarians were disappearing.

Gladys was first, Gladys of the tortoiseshell glasses and kitten heels. She worked in historical fiction, and would always bring a flask of rum to the weekly librarian meetings, which had started as business affairs, but then gradually morphed into an after-hours gossip and tippling session. Shannon suddenly realised that it had been weeks since she’d attended one of the meetings, weeks since she’d even seen one of her fellow staff members. What had they discussed last time? She ran a finger down the page of her notebook, sifting through the entries. The volunteer policy for new ghosts, the brand refresh that included a grinning skull inside the ‘H’…

Ah, yes.

The sign out the front. It was a stone carving, worn by years of rain and wind and spectral storms, and Management thought it was dated. “Come up with something new,” one of the executives had said to Shannon at a chance meeting in the lunchroom. “Something more youthful!” he added before shambling off to a meeting, and she’d made a note to mention it, and the librarians had some preliminary discussion, but then Gladys had disappeared. 

“Helping a researcher with a project,” Ruth said, but when Shannon went to find Ruth later to ask about the details, she couldn’t find her. Soon afterwards Nathaniel vanished, and Tatiana. Were any of them left? 

Shannon looked down at her watch, wondering what day it was, for she’d lost track—she’d been reading a tome about alchemy, and totally forgotten about the outside world, and the fact that, above the great vaulted library roof, there was a sky with a sun and a moon that rose and fell. Then she remembered that her timepiece wouldn’t tell her what day it was, only the hour. 

Five ‘o’clock. 

Time to leave, to go home; that’s what she used to do, but lately it seemed like such a bother to wend her way through the rows of shelves that instead she remained at her desk, made a cup of tea, and stayed for the night. Nobody ever came to check on her; in fact, she didn’t think she’d seen another human for days. 

The whisper came a third time, and she stood up. Something was afoot, and she had to shake off the sleepy contented lethargy that hung about her like a cloak, and find out what it was. 

She left her desk and began to walk down the first row of books, and at once she was filled with THE FEELING. It is something that anyone who loves libraries knows, the sensation of plunging into a vast, mysterious sea, for once you step into the stacks, you lose control of your destiny. Even if you have a certain shelf in mind, you might end up anywhere, like a swimmer pulled by invisible currents. Sometimes you would get distracted by an attractive cover, or the display of new books; sometimes you didn’t even know what it was that stopped you, only that you meant to go to Ancient History, but were camped out in Folklore instead, and a week had passed. 

No one from the outside world could understand this, of course. “But didn’t you just need to grab a book for your chemistry homework?” they would ask, brow furrowed, and you would nod, and make no reply, because you knew that they did not feel the bewitching allure of the library, and never would.

But back to Shannon. 

Being a librarian, she was more immune to THE FEELING than the average patron, but even she could be subject to its power, and so she made her way carefully along, trying to ignore potential distractions. When she came to the end of one long row, she took a breath, and that was when she saw him.

A bookish young man standing in the aisle, an open folio in his hands. He had a mop of unruly dark hair and—she saw as he turned—soulful dark eyes; he was the very picture of earnest scholarship.

She smoothed her skirt, “Can I help you?” 

“Oh, yes!” He closed the book and set it down, and Shannon resisted the urge to grab it and re-shelve it. “I’m so glad you’re here, because I need to find a particular title—a very particular title—and I’ve been wandering about for ages looking for it.” 

“What is the subject?”

“The transmigration of souls.”

Shannon blinked as a little thrill ran down her spine. He was looking for a book in her section! 

“And the title?”

“The Capture of Errant Lifeforce by Butler Gerard.”

Shannon nodded. “Yes, of course. That’s a classic volume…follow me, please.” She turned and went down another row, walking slowly, for couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a visitor, especially one as pleasant as this. “Are you conducting a research project?”

He nodded, though she couldn’t see it. “Oh, yes. It is called Animus, and I am the chief investigator. I am presently conducting fieldwork, in fact.” 

Shannon stopped. “What sort of fieldwork can you do on a metaphysical topic such as the passage of souls from one body to another?”

The boy gave a shy smile. “Oh, you would be surprised…there’s been lots of advances over the years in detection of faint objects, magnetic fields and neutrinos and so forth…”

She gave a little smile. “So…you have been able to detect the presence of a soul?”
 “Oh, yes.” Suddenly the boy went still, and his eyes, which had been dark, lit up with twin flames. “You, for example. I can see that you have a very beautiful soul. I can almost feel it…”

He reached out a hand and ran his fingers along her cheek, so slowly and softly that she did not move, and almost against her will she closed her eyes. When was the last time another human had caressed her so?

“I must get your book,” she said softly. She opened her eyes and noticed that he had a Coke can in his satchel, but his fingers were so gentle, she decided not to tell him he wasn’t allowed to have any food or drink. “It’s just a few shelves away,” she went on, but he placed a finger on her lips.
 “Shhh. I’ve got what I came for.”

And then he reached out, and she felt the bite of a cold sharp blade under her ribs, and she remembered the name of the research project that had claimed the other librarians.

“What…do you want…” she whispered, falling to her knees. Her pretty blouse was turning red on her left side.

“To steal your soul.” His eyes were blazing like bonfires now.

“Why…me?”

“Because librarians are full of knowledge, which means you have souls of great substance.” “Blllubb…” Shannon couldn’t speak, only gurgle.

“They said I was crazy,” he whispered as she gasped for breath. “But I showed them. I wrote a standard operating procedure for soul harvesting, and I found the perfect place to test it. Yes, I had some setbacks…the other librarians befuddled me…but it’s going to work this time.” He grabbed his Coke can and held it aloft. “Prepare to experience The Distillation of Air!” 

“The Distillation of Air?” Suddenly all of Shannon’s energy focused. “I don’t think so. You are doing it wrong.”

“What?” He scowled. “No, I’m not!” 

Shannon shook her head as she recalled the contents of Gerard’s thesis. “Yes, you are…Gerard advised using a glass bottle blessed by a priest, not a Coke can…”

“What’s wrong with a Coke can? I rinsed it out and everything!”

“No.” Gerard’s script was clear in her mind now. “A soul will not be captured in a vessel made of metal. Instead it will be repelled, and sent into the nearest object…which you would know if you’d done your research…”

“I’ve done my research! I spent six months on my literature review!”

The boy went on grumbling, but Shannon didn’t listen, for she suddenly remembered something else. She been repairing an old volume the other day, one about attacks carried out in libraries. It was called The Librarian’s Defence Agaynst Ruffians, and it covered many topics, for it was written in a more violent time —there was a whole section on bruises suffered from hurled encyclopedias—but the one that came to mind was an entry about stab wounds. 

One may think the library offers no succour for such an injury, but this is a falsehood, for the bibliophile has only to bind the wound with cobwebs and library dust.

 Shannon sighed with relief. Normally dust would be in short supply in her section, but just lately things had gotten a bit lax, and now she saw detritus in abundance. She reached out and scooped up a cobweb. The moment she pressed it under her shirt, she could feel it working—it was very potent, for spiders in haunted libraries are creatures of great skill—and then she stood up. Her voice, when she spoke, was loud and clear.

“You dare to attack a librarian in these hallowed walls…and not just a librarian, but the head of the Arcane and Occult section? What sort of a fool are you?”

He staggered back, his eyes wide. “I’m not a fool…I’m a chief investigator!”

“You won’t be for much longer.” Her voice was thundering now, and she felt her power swell, the mystical power of all librarians, but before she said any more, she heard it again—the whispering. It was much louder now, comprised of many voices, and after a moment, she recognized them. 

The voices of all her friends.

“Give him what for, darling!” Gladys yelled. “Cram a musket up his backside!”

“Boil him in a vat and make gravy from his eyes!” Nathaniel called—his area was cooking.

Tatiana yelled something about stabbing the boy with a hatpin, for she worked in fashion, and Ruth advised throwing him into a volcano, for she liked geology, and Shannon listened to all this with amazement. 

“What’s going on?” she asked, addressing the book that sounded like Gladys. “What happened to you?”

Gladys fluttered her pages. “He tried to take our souls, but instead the bumbler sent us into the books! We tried to warn you that you were next!”

“Ah.” Shannon nodded. “So that was you whispering…sorry I didn’t heed your warning.”

 “It doesn’t matter…we’ll get him now!”

Then all the books, which were actually trapped librarians, tumbled off the shelf and hit the boy in the head—the slim volume on corsets might not have been bad, but the Annotated Collection of Lovecraft was a mighty weapon, and he fell like a bag of concrete.

Shannon prodded his body with one stylish boot. “What do we do now?”

“Punish him!” Tatiana cried.

“String him up!” Ruth added. “Feed him to the bookworms!”

“Hmm.” Shannon tapped her foot. “Well, we do need some new signage…”

So she mounted the boy’s head on a pike and put it out front, right by the ‘H,’ and they all agreed it was definitely youthful, and Management were too busy arguing about the name of a form to notice, and Shannon returned to her section and found a spellbook to free her friends from their leatherbound cells. Right before she did, she asked a question.

 “What is it like, to have your soul stuck in a book?”  

Ruth hopped forward. “Oh, it’s wonderful! We get to sit in the library all day and read, and travel from story to story, and no one ever asks us to fill out any forms.”

“Really?” 

Shannon set down the book and said the spell in reverse, and instead of releasing the other librarians, she joined them, slipping into a volume about the magical properties of clouds.

 

***

 

A few weeks later, a new librarian started in the occult section. She liked the job overall, but she kept hearing the strangest sound—a whisper, a rumour, as if people were speaking nearby, but no one was ever there. One day she turned to her assistant.

“Did you hear anything?”

“No.” He shook his head. “But then again, this is a haunted library.” 

She shivered, and wondered if she should have taken a job at the state archive, which might be boring, but definitely not haunted.

But this, dear reader, is the truth:

All libraries are haunted, for they are filled with the souls of those long past, authors faithfully stored within the pages of their books, waiting to speak to whomever passes by, and be brought to life again…so in that sense, all libraries are haunted, but in the best possible way.

 

_______________

Marissa is thrilled to have won the 2024 competition! She grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and is now living in Brisbane, Australia. She loves fantasy, and has written three books, none of which have yet been published. For more information about her, please visit mmcnamarabooks.co